I am a Senior Political Contributor at Forbes and the official 'token lefty,' as the title of the page suggests. However, writing from the 'left of center' should not be confused with writing for the left as I often annoy progressives just as much as I upset conservative thinkers. In addition to the pages of Forbes.com, you can find me every Saturday morning on your TV arguing with my more conservative colleagues on "Forbes on Fox" on the Fox News Network and at various other times during the week serving as a liberal talking head on other Fox News and Fox Business Network shows. I also serve as a Democratic strategist with Mercury Public Affairs.

No Dirty Politics In IRS Investigations Of Tea Party

The conservative blogosphere is all-atwitter this afternoon over the revelation that the Internal Revenue Service targeted various Tea Party groups in the days leading up to the presidential election of 2012.

Sadly for the critics of the president, things are not always as they initially appear to be and the effort to paint the improper IRS activity as a White House directed political dirty trick is unlikely to gain the traction opponents would like to see catch fire.

Keep in mind that the kerfuffle does not involve the targeting of groups for audits seeking evidence of a failure to pay taxes. Rather, the problem involved the IRS’s review of applications filed by the various entities seeking tax-exempt status under the law.

At the time in question, many newly formed political organizations were seeking IRS certification that would allow them to avoid paying taxes on funds raised—the overwhelming majority of these organizations being Tea Party related groups. As the IRS believed that many of those filing for exemptions were stretching the limits of qualification, some low-level staffers at the agency’s Cincinnati, Ohio office decided to target for closer review those organizations with “Tea Party” sounding names, such as “patriot” and, of course, “Tea Party”. In the effort to dig deeper to determine if these groups qualified, the agency people involved asked many of the filing organizations to disclose names of those who had made contributions along with other data they deemed necessary to determine if the group qualified for tax free status.

The problem is that the agents involved were not randomly conducting these checks on all the political organizations seeking tax free status and were specifically targeting the Tea Party related groups.

This was, clearly, improper activity which is why the IRS issued today’s apology.

What’s that you say? You still don’t believe that the White House was not involved in this?

That’s what I thought.

Maybe then, it will interest you to know that there are only two officials at the IRS that are political appointments—the commissioner (who is the boss) and the chief legal counsel. And while you may be thinking that it would be a piece of cake for the White House to place a call to the Commissioner and nudge him into putting a little heat on Tea Party groups so that they would be kept busy defending themselves from government annoyance rather than putting their energies into defeating the President, it would not have been quite so simple a task for the White House to accomplish.

Why?

Because the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service during the period in question was Douglas Shulman, a political appointee of President George W. Bush.

In fact, not only was Commissioner Shulman a Bush appointee, he would certainly have had no motivation to do the political bidding of a Democrat president considering that Mr. Shulman had already announcedprior to the election that he would be stepping down from his post in November.

If you imagine that the President’s staff had the ability to go around the top political appointee at the IRS and attempt to influence the civil servants who work at the agency, consider how many levels of civil servants the White House staff would have had to persuade to do their bidding given that those who pursued the policy were well down the totem-pole of seniority, working away at the Cincinnati office.

Indeed, to suggest that the White House could get career civil servants to do its political dirty work would truly defy the laws of political reality.

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Well the normal progressive bias of employees of the federal government combined with a lack of ethics (or brains) explains this. Just as Regan never told folks to sell arms Obama does not need to tell anybody to have a bias against their opponents.

exactly right Rick… there is nothing nefarious about this. It is called “efficiently using your resources” to target the most suspect groups.

What I would like to see is findings vs assessments/outcomes for this targeting action…. interestingly enough, no one seems to be forthcoming about that. If IRS employees spotted smoke… let’s hear how many showed fire

I don’t believe the White House was responsible for these problems. I do believe that life would be better if tax laws were such that no bureaucrat needed to approve or disapprove non-profit status for any one.

I believe life would be better if the term “non-profit” had never been developed.

Excuse me, but I wonder if you can point out any time when an administration used the IRS to fulfill political objectives when the Commissioner of the IRS was appointed by a President from the party that would be the subject of the attack? You can’t do that. So, maybe you should dig a little deeper the next time. I swear, some of you just read the headline, don’t bother actually reading what the article says and then proceed to make yourself foolish in print.

But you pen an entire article, that, I must assume, took some time and effort…yet you look foolish in print. I can, however, understand how someone would look at who wrote the article and assume it was full of weak assumptions and flacid logic.

Com’on. So you believe the past is the perfect predictor of the future? Yeah, I’m sure you thought housing prices HAD to continue going up because they had for the lats 45 years. So using your false logic, “it’s not happened before therefore it is not happening now”, is the basis for your argument that it is certainly an innocent mistake. Let me know when you grow up and approach your job without inserting your obvious biases.

Rick: if you think the Benghazi whistleblowers are an example of how an Administration cannot control its employees, you haven’t been listening. Hicks has been excoriated, demoted, now doing nothing. Head of station in Libya, decorated and lauded up the wazoo for job performance, talks to Chaffetz = demoted and damaged, career likely over. This is the performance of an Administration with nothing to hide? And all the folks that said “conspiracy theorists” to the Tea Parties as they were claiming discrimination 2 and 3 years ago (and you would be one of those folks) they were proved right. Glad you at least admit your blind, unthinking devotion. Looks like that is the only truth you admit.

1. You note that the administration did all these terrible things to these people who testified on Benghazi including one who you say the boom is about to fall on him for testifying. And yet, they still testified which is precisely the point I made. Elected officials and political appointees have never been successful at muzzling civil servants and never will. The only thing remarkable about your comment is you set out to be nasty, snarky and offensive and then proceeded to make my point beautifully. I suppose you were too busy thinking of how many awful things you can say to actually carefully read the point I was making. Well done.

2. Funny, but I have a pretty good memory for everything I write and I don’t recall ever saying anything about Tea Party members and conspiracy theories two or three years ago or, for that matter, ever. I wonder if you can show me otherwise? No…than stop wasting readers times with a nonsensical rant that does nothing more than repeat what I have already written.

Political activism doesn’t need Jay Carney to tell them what to do. There have long been members of the press, Hollywood superstars and anyone else with an influential position to take matters into their hands. Are you saying this only matters if we can find a smoking link to the Oval Office?

The IRS has over 66% of employees as registered Democrats according to private donations on record.

Here’s the point, of the hundreds of organizations that targeted “Tea Party” or “Patriot” names, ZERO were found to be out of compliance with their exempt status. The witch hunt had NO basis, NO pattern of abuse, virtually NO reason to conduct the reviews. If a government position is going to set up a large-scale investigation that will take precious resources to conduct and yields no infractions then you have to look for motive. What will the White House do to ensure this kind of activism doesn’t happen? How long are Democrats going to hang their virtues up for review without taking responsibility for any of the convenient actions that have proliferated during past 5 years?

The IRS scenario sounds about as low level as Benghazi does high. Why I wonder did not Obama contribute to the Tea Party himself since they remove votes from the Republicans such as Ross Perot did Bush Sr when Clinton was elected. ADP I believe to this day, still has the contract to process government checks. So what if Hillary gets toasted over Libya..the last thing to call it was making a decision at the very least besides ‘Kick ‘em while they’re down’ was precisely her behavior during the Watergate hearings. I especially noticed her criticism of his ‘illegal’ bombing of rockets in Laos. The ones they once shot at me. This time really should be the last time she runs. Hope so, I’m getting tired.

Few people realize Darrell Issa is responsible for inventing and foisting on an unsuspecting and unprepared public one of the most insidious and nefarious devices of the 20th century, a device that has ruined the urban and suburban landscape for decades, without end yet in sight. Yes, the man invented the car alarm, that useless, pointless noise that wakes one from a dead sleep to announce a cat has leapt on one’s car.

Totally useless for any crime stopping purpose, as the alarm sound is so common, so ordinary, that no one thinks to see if a car is actually being stolen (in fact, most people are grateful if a thief succeeds and manages to drive the beeping, honking, wailing contraption from the area), but loud and frequent enough to wake the dead from a sound sleep as it cycles for whoop, whoop to rising and falling tones, to the sounds of a Star Wars attack to honking like a New York cab driver stuck in traffic, not ending until every single sleep disturbing sound known to man has been played at least twice.

The device could well be categorized as a crime against humanity by any civilized society, he continues to sell these devices to disturb the peace and quiet of every neighborhood in this country.

Well that’s it, the liberal media has spoken. The liberal media has convened and found the administration innocent of any wrong doing, just as in Benghazi, and now we will see the barrage of articles defending the administration and villain-izing the republicans as “politicizing” the IRS activity, demonized them for saying “but wait a minute, isn’t the treasury part of the administration?’

And why should the factoid, liberal narrative work? * month of running cover for Benghazi seemed to work just fine. The biggest story this year will be the disillusionment of the American people of the main-stream media and the recognition that they are traitors to their own profession and traitor to America.

But at this point, the media narrative pushed by our “journalists” is that the criminal activity of the IRS was just a silly slip up, golly, how embarrassing, sorry about that!

There won’t be the same manufactured outrage on the right over this that there is over the nothingburger that is Benghazi, because Republicans really don’t want anyone looking into why, exactly, we’re giving tax-exampt status to political groups, or into what those groups might be doing.

I’m not really sure what your point is here, Rick, after reading your political rant against the Tea Party. I think you point may have been that the gap between the political class and the civil servants ensures that political schemes are usually not implemented because of an immovable civil servant class.

If this is true, then how does policy get implemented, assuming the civil servant class is immovable? If civil servants don’t listen or, worse, thumb their nose at the political class who are in office on a temporary basis, then how do we control our government? It looks impossible, based on this example. Government civil servants are basically lifers who don’t really have to respond to anyone elected by the American people to govern. Since political schemes are almost always intertwined with legitimate policy considerations – let’s face it, politicians are intelligent and know how things work, ethics aside – it would be extremely difficult to successfully make the case that separates governing from political schemes.

In fact, Rick, your criticism of the Tea Party actually makes their point – too much government is a problem. Disconnected civil servants from the elected representation creates an inefficient, ineffective government. Even if we assume responsible policy, certainly a stretch for the current and most recent administrations, civil servants simply don’t have to implement it full, if at all. The bigger government grows, the more dysfunction it has and the longer it takes executive decisions to be implemented. This is true with large corporations as well. The Tea Party simply understands that bigger is not better with respect to government. They should thank you for making their point with your article.

Is Benghazi a real problem. I can’t figure out what the problem would be if it is. What it seems like is the administration wanted to downplay the attack as a terror attack and fiddled the press release wording or talking points or whatever. It was stupid to play word games and then say you didn’t, however the military’s explanations of why there was no military support are pretty straight forward and I don’t see anything to be found there. From the assistance perspective the major problem seems to be timing was based on the attack on the consulate or whatever which was pretty much over by the time support even got started. If there had been a realization that the attack would continue later then assistance could have been sent, but I believe most thought the attack was over. Then it continued at the safe house and again completed before assistance could arrive.

All this Benghazi criticism of the president has to stop. That could not possibly have been a terrorist attack. All correct thinking persons know that film critics in the Middle East tend to be homicidal. And our government had properly relied on a local militia group to provide all our embassy security needs there. They just didn’t expect so many film critics to show up at one time. Leave these competent liberal people alone.

“Because the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service during the period in question was Douglas Shulman, a political appointee of President George W. Bush.

In fact, not only was Commissioner Shulman a Bush appointee, he would certainly have had no motivation to do the political bidding of a Democrat president considering that Mr. Shulman had already announced prior to the election that he would be stepping down from his post in November.”

What you neglect to mention is that Douglas Shulman is a partisan Democrat.

Interesting comment. The problem is I can’t find anything to back it up. I’ve found a few comments to other articles saying this. The closest thing I can find to a credible source is Allgov.com-but that one is kind of weird. It runs Shulman’s biography and then there is a line that says he gave $500 to DNC. The problem is, they don’t seem to do this for other government officials whose bios they provide. And if Schulman gives political contributions, it seems unlikely the only one he’s given is this one contribution to the DNC. I’m not saying you are wrong-but you really should provide some authority for this or it is somewhat hard to believe. If you have a credible source, could you please provide it to us?

more manufactured republican outrage. I know a republican that gave 1,000 to a democrat – his sister was running for office. She won.

you republicans are just so suspicious and think everything is a conspiracy theory unless the person is on YOUR team. Then, republicans all fall in line like good little soldiers and refuse to ask the hard questions that should be asked giving a pass to crooks, criminals, adulterers, pedophiles and liars on their side.

Instead, republicans manufacture outrage because they have nothing else. They prove they are idiots. Only in crazy republicanland does anyone get upset that lottery numbers were unknown until the numbers were drawn on live TV.

Not sure why you chose to disparage Ms Martin and her husband and their bankruptcy five years ago. According to the article you cited, they were trying to decide whether to pay their blue collar workers or pay the IRS. Tough call. Sure, bad management of funds, but still tough call. They chose to pay their employees.

So, because of this, she’s not allowed to criticize the government that targeted private citizens for following the thousands of rules and hoops the bureaucrats created?

You do have to wonder (I do at least) why no one was fired over the incidents, unless those above them think it really wasn’t that big of a deal, this misuse of power.

I tuned in earlier today to a Fox News program and found a politician whining about the IRS issue in the news regarding how some in the IRS sought to determine whether certain organizations were entitled to certain tax exempt status.

What really ticked me off was when he alleged that THIS “hearkened back to the Nixon days”.

That was a reference how it was alleged Nixon used the IRS to go after his political enemies.

Well!

Let’s talk a little about those infamous Nixon years.

It was during the Nixon administration that George Bush and Omar Burleson were able to thump IRS executives on the head in a successful effort to get the agency to issue an administrative rule (Revenue Ruling 70-549), contrary to fact and law, that would get some of the Bush/Burleson constituents off the IRS hotseat and allow all those “basketball ministers” at places like Pepperdine University to claim their income was income tax free ministerial housing.

Over the course of 20 years the IRS had properly interpreted the facts and the law and concluded that those “basketball ministers” were not entitled to the income tax free benefit.

Then came Nixon. Then came Burleson. Then came Bush.

If the media, the politicians and the public are not going to demand that the IRS, Washington, Bush (who may still have enough sense to offer his personal, direct testimony), and those private businesses whose employees benefit from ruling come clean about Revenue Ruling 70-549, maybe the FFRF will be successful in writing that history as its federal case challenging IRC 107 proceeds…with trial currently scheduled for January 2014.

I’d look to see if Tea Party enemy Karl Rove has his fingerprints on this somewhere. He has a great connection at the head of the IRS, and a desire to see the Tea Party fail. I know my comment is pure speculation, not even based on what “some people say” could be true, yet might qualify “as fact” on some popular “news” outlets and internet blogs to at least pass their credibility test for a few media frenzy cycles. Still it’s intriguing to ponder…

This is just the same kind of ‘common sense, reasonable profiling’ that you’ve been calling for on the issues of foreign terrorism and illegal immigration! How do you like a taste of your own medicine? Not so much huh? Well guess what, GET USED TO IT!

Any free democratic nation must protect its self from those who repeatedly threaten to take the law into their own hands and overthrow a democratically elected government which is clearly operating within the guidelines of the constitution. Your right-wing radio hatemongers may tell you that this administration is violating the constitution, but not ONE SINGLE ONE of your elected Republican leaders in congress has brought forth a case claiming that the administration has violated the constitution AND THAT DRIVES Y’ALL NUTS! Sorry, stop listening to radio-liars and you won’t be so disgruntled that you bring guns to political events and ACT LIKE TERRORISTS!

Hell yeah, you are being singled out for special scrutiny…by the FBI and the CIA and the IRS! And that’s the way it should be until you learn to act like reasonable, peace loving, law abiding citizens! http://ChipShirley.Com/

Not sure which is worse: that you wrote that or that you may actually believe the words you wrote.

So, according to your logic, should the three letter agencies also be investigating the Eco-terrorist groups that actually blow things up for their cause?

Point to one thing tea partiers have done – one thing – that warrants extra scrutiny. Bringing guns to a TP event? Is THAT the best you have? Sorry, that pesky 2nd Amendment thingy. The left has tried to blame the TP for Boston Marathon bombing, Aurora, and the Giffords shooting, and others. None of it was true. The fact that TP protest peacefully puts them in a much higher standing than “foreign terrorists and illegal immigrants”, don’t you think?

Lastly, if the alphabet news agencies would do their jobs, there’d be no need for talk radio. Think Benghazi coverup (4 Americans dead), Fast and Furious (Americans and Mexicans dead), Gosnell (Americans dead), and any number of issues (and scandals) that make the Left and the Administration look terrible. The issues are out there; it just doesn’t fit the leftist meme to investigate them. Pity. No, crying shame.

Would they have been investigated if Bush were still in office? I think you know the answer.

EXCELLENT article. Having worked for IRS as a youngling… it was clear to me that if civil servants sought to target certain words…that would be exactly what IRS does in ALL cases. Have a home office, claim in on your return and expect an audit. Claim some tax exemption from a suspect tax free fund….expect an audit. IRS has lost personnel…it is important to “target” your resources to the most suspect.

Now directors, presidential appointees, can establish primary missions…but they don’t direct day to day work. I left IRS in the 80′s after Reagan’s appointee pointed IRS resources away from auditing business to targeting the middle income folk…because they were the most vulnerable. Sorry… that’s the way it was. It was disgusting…and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

The truth does matter, Rick, both in this instance and regarding Benghazi.

I’m not saying that the White House had any involvement in the IRS “scandal”; they almost certainly did not. My point is that I’d like to get a clear, honest explanation regarding what transpired–in both Benghazi and this IRS “scandal.”

There is very little sound logic in attempting to prove that no government employee can abuse their power because three employees did not. And that’s exactly what we have here. A few government employees abusing their power by advocating one political party by intimidating the opposition. This is worse than ‘dirty politics’. This is an example of government oppression . . . and if the Left doesn’t acknowledge it, then it can be considered sanctioned by the Left. And just as no one in government is faulted for the failure in Benghazi, if no one is found responsible for this abuse by this administration, then for all practical purposes it was sanctioned.

The fact that the abuse of power cannot be traced directly to the White House does not rule out dirty politics. At the same time we have a President who lectures a future generation not to heed the warnings of government oppression. How insane is that?

Too funny! A Tea Party Cofounder declared bankruptcy and essentially steals money from the government, the American people, and has a vendetta for the IRS. Personally, Tea Party organizations, especially in 2012 that were seeking tax exempt status is a joke, and a disgrace to the foundation of our constitution and the very reasons our forefathers created this nation! Seriously though, the Tea Party is a political organization. Everything they are involved in is political. There is no way in hell that a single one of these organizations should ever be given a tax exempt status.

Mr. Ungar– You mention there are “only two” political appointees in the IRS. One was a Bush appointee, but the other, whom you don’t name, is William Wilkins, who, as it turns out is the official to whom the professional staff member Carter Hull “was instructed to send the applications through Ms. Lerner’s office and the office of IRS Chief Counsel William Wilkins for additional scrutiny. Once he delivered them, however, the process stalled and the applications mouldered until August 2011…”

It looks to me like the thing you mock as if it were impossible is looking very, very plausible. Obama’s team deliberately and selectively slow-walked the Tea Party related applications.

Really? Did you know that the President makes a total of more than 6,000 appointees, 1125 of them requiring Senate confirmation?

I suppose you imagine that the White House has a personal relationship with each and every one of them? So the fact that an appointee, who I’m feeling pretty comfortable in thinking had no relationship with anyone at the White house, had some tangential involvement simply doesn’t constitute much in the way of evidence-except for those just dying to believe that the White House was involved, all evidence to the contrary>

“Supposing someone imagines” seems to be a particular occupational hazard for you, Mr. Ungar. I try hard not to suppose anything… Can you imagine that?

1) “Tangential relationship”? Are you serious? It was Atty. Wilkins who defended Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s activities when the UCC’s tax-exempt status was investigated by the IRS because of candidate Obama’s speech at their convention in Hartford and the political operative sprinkled all around the event. Mr. Wilkins told The American Lawyer that he did it pro bono.

2) If Mr. Wilkins’ relationship was “tangential”, may I get you to agree with me now that it would be inappropriate for him to claim executive privilege? ‘Cuz I’m pretty sure that will be team Obama’s next move.

3) You state “Indeed, to suggest that the White House could get career civil servants to do its political dirty work would truly defy the laws of political reality.” Uh.. the career civil servant– Mr. Hull– was instructed by his supervisors to send the Tea Party applications to the only Obama political appointee (one of only two political appointees) at IRS.

4) You state “Really? Did you know that the President makes a total of more than 6,000 appointees, 1125 of them requiring Senate confirmation?” That’s wonderful to know; thanks for schooling me. But it was YOU, sir, who pointed out the scarcity of political appointees at the IRS. Only two. Out of 6,000 appointees, only two at the IRS. And the civil servants were instructed to send the Tea Party applications to the only Obama appointee.